Update: A sharp-eyed friend noticed that the photoshopped version has a bust of Stalin that’s not visible in the “real” version. He attributed the addition of the bust to our kinky photoshopper, but something about the brush strokes in the “real” version made me suspicious that this was actually some of that genuine old-fashioned Soviet political correctness in action. And sure enough! There’s no bust of Stalin in the image as it exists currently in the Ukrainian National Museum of Art, but it’s clearly to be seen in many reproductions prior to 1958. Compare and contrast the two postcard versions here (from 1954 and 1958). While searching this out, I was amused to discover a page in which the author muses (I think) about his adolescent fantasies inspired by this artwork:

My best machine-assisted translation (not so good) gives us something like this:

…it is worth noting that in the Puritan atmosphere of Stalinist Russia one could become aroused from a perfectly innocent Socialist Realist painting entitled “Admission to the Komsomol,” widely reproducible and decorating almost every classroom. Among the characters in this picture was a young blonde who was sitting with her legs crossed and showing five or six centimeters of her thighs. And this — not so much the thigh as its contrast with the dark brown dress — drove me crazy and chased me in my dreams.